Andy McSmith's Diary: Lords rush to declare their ignorance in porn debate

Lord McColl of Dulwich claimed some knowledge of the subject, but only in his professional capacity as a surgeon

Most members of the House of Lords were quick to deny much first-hand experience with pornography (Getty)

For sheer entertainment, it would be hard to beat the House of Lords debate on pornography.

In a normal parliamentary debate, each participant will claim to know what he or she is talking about, though they may be speaking from utmost ignorance. In this one, their lordships were happy to profess to know nothing about the subject, and who am I to suggest that some may have been better informed than they made out?

The Bishop of Chester kicked off by confessing that “my first-hand knowledge of pornography is very limited”, though he was able to infer that it contains “degraded nudity, and ugly, squalid, dirty sex”. Pornography, the bishop added, is difficult to define; he was not going to attempt to define it, but something should be done, because – as he put it – “doing nothing does not seem right”.

Lord McColl of Dulwich claimed some knowledge of the subject, but only in his professional capacity as a surgeon. From that standpoint, he believed that pornography shrinks the brain.

Baroness Murphy, a professor of psychiatry, was one of the few who put knowledge before guesswork. To judge by her speech, she appears to have read Fifty Shades of Grey. “For those who have not looked at it, it is basically a bit of sado-masochism and really rather nasty, but it is popular and has been read and, I think, enjoyed,” she said. Her sensible plea was “let us protect children – but let us not be too virulent about an issue that we hardly know anything about”.

Is Corbyn actually posh?

“It was a surprise to me to hand over the leadership to someone who was both older and posher than me,” said Labour’s former interim leader Harriet Harman, at an award ceremony on 5 November.

Whether Jeremy Corbyn is actually “posher” than Harman is debatable, given that her aunt, Elizabeth Harman, married Earl Longford, and Lady Antonia Fraser is therefore her cousin. It is an undeniable fact though that Harman, at 65, is younger than Jeremy Corbyn, who is 66.

To coin a phrase

If Chris Leslie is mourning the position he once had in the Labour leadership, as shadow Chancellor, which he gave up when Corbyn became leader, he has other things going for him.

He has been elected chairman of the backbench Treasury committee, and a word he invented has made it into Collins English Dictionary. The word is “Corbynomics” – “the economic policies of Jeremy Corbyn” – the first recorded use of which was in an interview Leslie gave to The Independent on 3 August.

Bryant’s fancy address

Chris Bryant, the shadow Leader of the House, was telling MPs about the three marathons he has run. He said: “The last time I ran, just as we were getting to the final moments outside Buckingham Palace, I was depressed to be overtaken by two men dressed as custard tarts. It is probably not the first time an MP has chased a tart down The Mall.”

It’ll be on his headstone

Torsten Bell, Ed Miliband’s former policy director, has been blamed for that truly terrible idea Labour unveiled during the general election – the 8ft “Edstone” on which some vacuous election pledges were carved.

Appearing on BBC Two’s Daily Politics, he was cornered on the subject by Andrew Neil, who wanted to know what gave him the idea. “Lots of ideas in the heat of politics come and go,” was the slightly evasive reply.

He added: “We did a big service to British journalism by providing that level of fun and amusement for a considerable period.” That no one can deny.